Food and Flowers

I haven’t mentioned food much recently (not that I’ve said a whole lot here, overall, but you know…), and that’s mostly because I was eating pretty boringly for a while. Between the busyness of working on the Hinckley House and a pretty bad flare up of my digestive problems, I was just eating whatever was handy and harmless. It’s a relief to be feeling better now, both because I feel better and because I can eat the sort of veggie-and-fiber-rich diet I prefer. Well, except the above. A couple of times, I’ve bought some carrot muffins from the local Hinckley supermarket — they’re really just small carrot cakes, and I only mean ‘small’ in comparison to a full-sized cake. So good, but a little too much. So I made a loaf of pumpkin bread with pecans and raisins (I always use this recipe, with the oil, and with a non-vegan egg) and a tiny batch of cream cheese frosting to go with it. Slightly more sensible.

My local Minneapolis grocery store has started stocking organic kale, which is very good news (I think I’m right in saying that conventionally-grown kale is pretty dirty with pesticides). I made nachos tonight with half (blue) corn chips and half kale chips that I crisped up beforehand. A little bit crazy, a lot awesome. Really good — I do love kale. I’ve been doing well with my resolution to buy organic dairy (I used sharp cheddar on the nachos), and the Hinckley neighbors brought over a big bowl of eggs that their happy hens had laid, which was so kind of them. I hope they’ll let me buy eggs from them every week or so, because it would be wonderful to know exactly where they’re coming from.

And not food, but gardening. I’ve got a veggie garden going up in Hinckley see here), but all I have planted in Minneapolis right now are some potatoes. Actually, I planted several cabbages and cauliflower plants, but rabbits came and helped themselves. I’ll probably throw in some squash vines, because they don’t require constant picking throughout the growing season — or Brussels sprouts, if I can find them (I have to go to a real greenhouse). Apart from the veggie beds, though, the Minneapolis garden is going crazy. I missed my chance to divide the perennials this year, and they’re so overgrown that it’s funny. I had to put a fence at the edge of my raspberry patch to hold them back, so that I can mow the lawn next to them. And my Sven rose about doubled in size this year — it’s covered in blooms right now. So many that I actually felt okay about cutting some to bring inside, as you can see in the photo above. Sven is a variety developed by the University of Minnesota, a cold-hardy rose for the northern climes, and I bought the newest in the series — the Sigrid — for a little flower garden we have in Hinckley. I hope it will do just as well!